Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  The first week afterward was endless: in her mind, a sad, blue tune, low, minor, coloring her movements and humming behind her ordinary conversations.

  Two weeks later still, three weeks to the day since Bill had left, left although daily she saw his faraway face in school, Dave called her into the living room and said without preamble: “How would you like to go to Smith next year?” She was stunned for a moment, and Dave explained that Lee Stemy, an alumna of Smith, herself, had been looking forward for the last several years to getting her a scholarship; and in view of her remarkable high school record and Miss Stemy’s influence the scholarship was practically assured.

  Bettyann’s first thought was for Dave and Jane, and she tried stumblingly to argue that it would be unfair, after doing so much for her already, for them to give her the money for a school in the East; but Dave insisted quietly that she should go, and eventually when Jane said, “We’ve saved a little here and there for you to go to college on,” she agreed, conditional upon the scholarship and she felt proud and excited and happy, and it was fully fifteen minutes before she remembered that the world was a sad place.

  Riding down on the train from Kansas City (she had flown there from Boston), a slow milk train that seemed to stop at every farm, Bettyann tried without success to sleep; and staring out the window, finally resigned to wakefulness, she slowly became aware of the extent to which less than one semester at Smith had changed the familiar countryside for her. When the train shrieked into a tiny depot, she could not help but notice the sense of isolation, the deadness, and the insularity of the station house and the somnolent main street.

  Behind her in the East lay a different world. It was too new yet to be understood; but it was rich with promise like the sunrise. She caught glimpses of far horizons. New ideas from all directions, upon all subjects, were like keys unlocking doors to unexplored but exciting rooms, leaving her small and frustrated.

  Her deeply hidden, latent talents were stirring under the impact. The promise of maturity was within her. Excitement trembled at her: at her fingertips lay an answer, and she could almost, but not quite, trace its outlines.

  What am I to do with, how am I to fit into, this sad-funny world? What must I understand in order to be understood: and beyond that, in understanding, what then must I do? I wish I knew; I wish I knew.

  And it was almost there on her mind’s edge, almost, the answer. For one moment of utter loneliness (beyond the creeping train lay even, snow-splotched fields) she wanted most of all—as if that were the answer—to be completely understood. But that, she thought, would require complete identity; no, it is not that; the only one who can ever understand me completely is myself.

  How can I fit into this sad-funny life: what is my role: what best can I do? The answer would be complex, as many-sided as life seemed, itself, to be, without easy definition. But this she knew, that she would be required to give unto them, the people, yes, of which she was a part and not a part, of her best talent so that, in return, they would give unto her that which she most needed. What did they want from her; what did she want from them? (I wish I knew; I wish I knew.)

  And role, even that, was not enough. Beyond there was something more; perhaps some obscure branch of philosophy that she had never heard of dealt with that. Unless it was all on a purely local level, and need, where life and death seem senseless but through compulsive repetition gain meaning, need was the whole foundation: from complexity, vitality; from vitality, complex need: when the need dies, so, too, life: sleep, quiet, boredom, death. Role might be all. Could it be, she wondered, that beyond the role, I am always to seek because I have to, never to find because I cannot?

  The answer, the lesser answer, trembled on her mind’s edge, how can I fit into this sad-funny world? Not yet.

  Someday, someday, someday, clicked the wheels.

  And soon, sounded the whistle, soon.

  Dave met her at the station, helped her from the coach, took her single bag. The air was crisp and wintry as they walked across the gravel, upon which snow had perished, to the waiting car.

  Dave was silent after the greetings, and in sudden terror, feeling the strangeness between them, Bettyann cried, “There’s something wrong!”

  Helping her into the car, Dave said, “What makes you say that?”

  “You’re so . . . She paused, seeking a word that expressed her conviction; seeking to name, for herself as well as for him, the quality from which the conviction sprang. A twitch of his mouth; the inflection of his greeting; the reservation she thought she saw behind his eyes? Not these; not entirely. It was as if she had heard, at the first moment, his secret thought, and now she could not remember it. In sudden panic she said, “Is Mom all right? Has something happened to her?”

  Dave said, “Of course she’s all right.” He closed her door and came around the front of the car to the driver’s side, and, getting in, said, “They’ve been giving you enough to eat? You certainly look healthy, but, I mean, you’re getting enough? She laughed. “All I want.”

  “I went to the State University, you know. I was afraid in a private school maybe you wouldn’t get enough. But it’s good to see you. You look all right. . . It’s nice having you back.”

  “I was a little homesick,” Bettyann admitted.

  “How long do you have?” He set the cold motor snarling. “Ten days.”

  “That doesn’t seem very long. But you really like school? And what’s it like to go to a big Eastern college? How are the other girls; do you have any trouble getting along with them? And . . .”

  “Goodness! Not so fast! I’ve got ten days, Dad. If I tell you about everything now, I won’t have anything to talk about tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll just have to be like some stick-in-the-mud of a farmer: ‘Well, mighty cold today; looks like more snow; guess maybe the cold snap’ll be pretty hard on the winter wheat.’ ”

  The car made a U-tum away from the station.

  She snuggled into the seat. “It’s very exciting,” she said. “It’s different, too, than I imagined it.” She paused to get her general impressions of Smith into words, and the silence, almost immediately, was uncomfortable. Puzzled by the feeling, she glanced out the window and said, “The courthouse looks cleaner.”

  “Didn’t Jane write about that?”

  “They sand-blasted it last September. Just after you left.”

  “No . . . She must have forgotten . . . And what happened to Starke’s Hardware Store? Isn’t that a new front?”

  “He sold the store . . . They had a fire in the South End of town last month. It burned down the Castle place.”

  “Mom wrote about the fire.”

  Dave turned right on Fifth toward Garrison.

  She looked at him again. She tried to determine how to break through the hidden barrier newly between them. To forestall silence she said, “It seems smaller. The town. More compressed . . . The houses aren’t like New England houses. New England houses are all so old. They’ve been lived in so long that some of the aliveness has worn off on them. Our houses aren’t like that.”

  Then to avoid giving the impression that because of three months in the East she was beginning to feel superior to the town, she said quickly, “But I guess, if you go out West, they’re different out there, too. From pictures I’ve seen, you get an impression of isolated hostility . . .” She bit her lip in annoyance, for the words seemed to increase rather than reduce the impression she had sought to dispel. She fell silent.

  He drove to Maple; there he turned left.

  The sense that something was wrong made Bettyann feel unsure of herself. She was half afraid to speak again for fear that the words would worsen the unknown difficulty.

  “Is it something I’ve done or haven’t done?” she said.

  “What, honey? Haven’t done what?”

  “I know something’s bothering you. I can feel it. Is it something I’ve done? Is it costing you too much money to keep me in school? If it’s that. . .”

&nbs
p; “It’s nothing. It’s . . . Dave puffed his cheeks, a sign, Bettyann knew, that he was angry with himself. “All right,” he said lamely. “Ever since you were so high you could see right through me, I guess . . . I promised Jane I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Oh, Lord!” she said. “I’m sure it’s nothing so very solemn. I can’t imagine anything that has to be kept a deep dark secret.”

  He seemed more relaxed now that the barrier was down. “It’s probably not solemn at all. Jane just didn’t want to tell you until you were ready to go back . . . There was a man here to see you. He was from Boston or some place back East. Jane was afraid he might spoil your Christmas; and she’s looked forward to it so much. So she asked him if he’d mind waiting until you went back to Smith and see you there . . .” Dave had bounced the car up the driveway into the front yard. He cut the motor.

  Bettyann was puzzled and excited too. She could not quite understand the excitement. “What did he want?” she asked, and her voice surprisingly was tense.

  “I’ll get your bag,” Dave said. “Don’t mention what I told you. I’d better tell Jane first. He wanted to tell you—he had some information about—it was something about your . . . real parents. He didn’t tell us very much.”

  Bettyann’s heart was pounding.

  “Don’t say anything about it to Jane until I talk to her,” Dave said.

  And then Bettyann was running toward the porch where Jane was waiting. Jane caught her, laughing, and she cried, “It’s wonderful to be home, Mom!”

  He came two days after she returned to Smith. She had been waiting with mounting suspense, and, when the house mother knocked on the door to say, “Bettyann? There’s a young gentleman downstairs to see you. His name is Don Talley,” she felt her heart jump violently.

  “Don . . . Talley,” she said slowly, letting the strange name melt into her mind. She did not like the name exactly. It was not the sort of name she had expected, and she wondered what face would go with it. “All right, Mrs. Reeves. Tell him I’ll be right down.”

  As the house mother’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, her roommate said, “Amherst?”

  Bettyann shook her head uncertainly.

  “Aggies? Williams?”

  “I. . . don’t think so.”

  “Well,” the roommate said, disappointment in her voice. “Is he at least handsome?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  The roommate drew in her chin with amazement. “My God, you can’t even tell whether he’s cute or not?”

  “. . . I’ve never seen him before.”

  “And he’s never seen you?” The roommate considered Bettyann’s headshake. She blinked her eyes. “Now that I call real sex appeal: You’ve got it.”

  Bettyann smiled thinly.

  Gee, I wish . . . Well, don’t stand there. Go on down. Don t keep him waiting. Don’t give the others a chance at him.”

  “I’m . . . going,” Bettyann said.

  “And you might ask him if he’s got a friend who goes to Amherst or . . . Why, you’re white! What’s wrong? Are you scared?”

  “No . . . Well, maybe I am, too, in a way.”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble? Can I help, Bettyann? Is there anything I can do?”

  “I’m not in trouble . . . I guess I better go on down.”

  She left the room, and the door closed softly behind her. She walked down the wide stairs.

  The crystal chandelier was tinkling musically. It had been moved by the wind when the huge, white door to the porch was last opened.

  Bettyann stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

  “He’s the young gentleman talking to Mildred,” Mrs. Reeves said when she saw Bettyann staring around the room. “He looks like a very nice young man.”

  “Yes,” Bettyann said. “Thank you.”

  Bettyann crossed the room to where he was seated before the fireplace. Across the table from him, the brown-eyed Mildred was smiling with studied interest. Her hands lay quietly submissive in her lap; her lips were half parted.

  When Bettyann reached his side he stood up and she felt a wave of uncanny recognition cross her mind. It seemed to come from outside herself.

  “I’m Bettyann, Mr. Talley,” she said.

  “Bettyann . . . ah . . . Seldon?”

  “. . . Yes . . .”

  Mildred leaned forward, her eyes aggressive. “Won’t you join us? Don was just telling me he’s from out West.”

  The fire threw a ruddy glare over his face. The face was still sharp from the cold outside; it was classically handsome, self-reliant, calm. Snowflakes glistened on his overcoat.

  “Oh, Don, Don,” Mildred said, standing and coming to his elbow. “Here,” she said possessively, “let me take your overcoat, Don.”

  “No . . . Please . . . Don’t bother . . .”

  “I don’t want you to think our house isn’t hospitable. Let me help you off with it.” She fluttered at his collar. “I want you to feel perfectly at home here.”

  “Really, thank you, no,” he said with a trace of annoyance in his voice.

  “But . . .”

  “I prefer to leave it on.”

  Bettyann looked at Mildred’s suddenly lax face; childhood, sad childhood, perhaps, gleamed through on it for an instant, and then Mildred recovered her brittle defense and trying to keep injury from her voice, she said flippantly, “I—oh—Oh, well. I can see you two want to talk.”

  “If you don’t mind,” Don said.

  “Not at all,” Mildred said pleasantly and distantly. After a moment she said, “I have a damned test in Lit tomorrow and I have to be studying in a minute anyway.”

  When she was gone Don said, “She came over and sat down in front of me and started to play solitaire on this table. When I didn’t say anything she looked up and said, ‘I major in sociology.’ When I didn’t say anything, she said, ‘When I graduate I’m going down to New York and hang out a red light and do firsthand research. Where do you come from?’ So I told her I come from the West. She got my name from that woman over there I think.”

  Bettyann said gravely, and her eyes were puzzled, “I thought you told my parents you came from somewhere around here.”

  He nodded at the fire. “It was convenient to say that.” He turned to her. “Can you leave this building now?”

  “I—I could, I guess, if I wanted to.” For the first time she noticed that he had an accent; it was not heavy, scarcely noticeable, and she could not remember having ever heard one quite like it before.

  “I want you to get your coat. I want you to come with me.”

  The curtness of the statements made her want to answer an abrupt “No.” But she held the refusal for there was something in his face—some indefinable tension—some almost sadness: some quality that drew her sympathy and excused his rudeness.

  “Look at me,” he said. “I have some things I must tell you about yourself. Look at me. Will you come?”

  She looked into his eyes. She felt her heart flutter at the expression there. “I’ll come.” She reached out and touched his hand. “About my parents?”

  “And about other things. Bettyann, I have a great deal to tell you.”

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  “Please do.”

  He was waiting at the door when she came back downstairs. Mrs. Reeves nodded to her and said maternally, “Don’t forget, dear. Eleven o’clock.”

  Wordlessly, Don opened the door, and the two of them stepped out from the bright warmth into the dark cold. “Where are we going?”

  “To the Draper.”

  Her feelings toward him were confused. She did not altogether like him; she felt that she should not trust him as fully as she seemed inclined to. And yet, beyond that, she felt a kinship with him that she could not define. . . they won’t let me go up to any of the rooms,” she said.

  “Walk by the desk naturally. It will be all right.”

  She thrust her face into the snow. She should, perhaps, be afra
id, but she was not. Or perhaps she was afraid—not of him but that he might tell her things she did not want to know about herself. They walked past the chapel. (Snow creaked under their feet.) They left the white campus. They turned onto the main street, and downtown Northampton lay before them.

  Her teeth chattered, and she held onto his arm.

  Neon lights made the drifting snow soft orange, and their breath was frosty, and they heard laughter from a bar. They walked on. The town was readying for sleep.

  At the Draper they stamped their feet free of clinging snow. “Come. They won’t notice you.”

  They walked up the outer steps, past the desk, and the drowsy clerk stared through her without interest, as if she were not there at all, and she looked at Don whose face was relaxed.

  Group voices, singing, drifted up from the Pilgrim’s Room below. A girl laughed.

  They walked up the worn carpet of stairs leading from the lobby to the second floor. Don led the way to the room. He tapped lightly on the door. “Don,” he said.

  “Come in.”

  He opened the door and let Bettyann enter before him. He closed the door.

  “Sit down, Bettyann,” said the man on the bed. His face was old and lined and his eyes were deepset and his lips were thin and his hair was white.

  She studied his face. “Why—why,” she said in wonder. “You’re not old!”

  The man on the bed nodded.

  “She’s one of us,” he said.

  “You may call me Robin,” the man on the bed said. “I’m going to tell you some very strange things, Bettyann.”

  Bettyann’s eyes were wide.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  Although her heart was beating wildly she said, “I’m not . . . afraid.” And she wondered if that were strictly true.

  Robin said, “Will you close your eyes, my dear?”

  And his voice, like Don’s, was a foreign voice; and beyond that, more than his voice was foreign. His face, everything about him, unreal. She could not pinpoint the unreality any more than she could explain how she knew that he was not old, any more than she could explain the feeling of kinship with him. She closed her eyes. Her lips moved silently. She stood upon the brink of something completely beyond all her experience. She waited.